A GREEN ROOF THAT IS WHITE
A living roof isn’t the only green roof option for your building. While living roofs are a great way to help the environment and reduce your building’s carbon footprint, they are not the only option for green roofing. Another great green roofing option is actually a white roof coating. Designed to restore old roofs that were failing, silicone roof coatings were discovered to be great UV reflectors, and therefore great at keeping buildings cool in the hot summer months. While they may not contain plants that actually absorb CO2 and emit oxygen back into the atmosphere, reflective roof coatings are still a viable green roofing option.
Reflectivity Comes Standard
A silicone roof coating can reflect up to 87% of the sun’s UV rays back into the atmosphere, meaning your building doesn’t absorb that heat into itself and stays much cooler. This reflectivity eases the pressure on your AC unit to cool the building in the summer. This is not only a great feature for the environment; but for your wallet as well. The reflectivity of a silicone roof coating means your AC runs less, and you spend less on the energy costs to keep it running.
Recoating is True Sustainability
Installing a reflective roof coating on your building is a great way to help the environment and save yourself money, but there is one other major benefit for you as a building owner when you install a silicone roof coating: the capability of recoating. A silicone roof coating will (very slowly) become thinner as it lives on a roof. This means that over time, you get less and less protection from your coating. However, 20 or so years after installation, you can go up on your roof and apply a new coat of silicone directly to the existing silicone roof. This provides you with 20 more years of roof life and a warranty, without having to tear any material off. That is an extremely green roofing option.
Conclusion
White reflective coatings are not only beneficial for you and the environment through their reflective properties, but also at the end of their lives when they are recoated with no tearoff. This saves you time and money, while also preventing material from being sent to the landfill as in a normal roof tearoff scenario. What a green building solution!
